


My Desperate Countdown

by AgapantoBlu



Series: Take Care of Me [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Another Not So Happy Story From Me, Kidnapping, M/M, Mention of Past Abuse, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post "This Ain't Love", References to that story will be explained in the notes, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 00:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6493219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Akashi is still striving with the aftermath of what Haizaki had done to him, something happens that he would have never expected and the world crumbles down once more.</p><p>Kuroko knows he'll have to be stronger than ever to get out of this alive.</p><p>***</p><p>
  <i>It happened so fast that Seijuro barely realized.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>The van door opened, and Nigou howled.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Kuroko looked down at the dog, unaware.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>A big sturdy man, completely dressed in black and with a balaclava covering his face, leaned outward from the van and outstretched an arm.</i>
</p><p>***</p><p>"Take Care of Me" Series - II Story - Kuroko Centric</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvesMagick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvesMagick/gifts).



> I know, it took me a life-time to update this, but I had a lot to work on and a ton of other projects to finish. That said, the second chapter is FAR from being posted. This is more of a teaser to let you all know I'm working on this series and I'm not going to drop it, okay?
> 
> Hope you like it~!
> 
> WARNING: This chapter contains mention of a past abusive relationship, including rape and sexual violence (and, but it's a minor warning, the spoiler of the end of the other story of this series). Please, be careful!

 

**__Chapter_1__ **

****

Boiling air rippled on his stomach, beside his navel, when the thin lips that had been worshipping his skin hatched after the umpteenth kiss, freeing a silent but trembling sigh.

Akashi’s hands clenched in fists on the cloth of the pillow under his head as he felt hotness building up more and more for every inch of his body that was touched. He pursed his lips to hold back a moan, and of the two hands lying on his hips, one fled to gently grab his, and the mouth climbed back upward a little, toward his chest. Humid saliva and a dutiful tongue made one of his nipples swell, and this time he let his need for touch turn into a desperate sound at the bottom of his throat.

The hands went downward again, a bit lower this time, stopping briefly at the hem of his trousers, and he closed his eyes.

 

_“Undress for me, whore.”_

 

“NO!” 

Seijuro didn’t think as he pushed the littler body away from above him and jumped up. Panting, his chest naked in the uncombed nest of sweaty hot sheets, Akashi grabbed the futon itself just to have something to hold on to as new tremors slowly chased away old bad memories from his head.

He needed just a little, some mere seconds, to come back to his senses, and yet he couldn’t feel satisfied for that pathetic goal. He bent a leg upward and laid an arm on it as to sustain the hand that went to cover his face and to hide the angered and disgusted shape of his lips and the desperate light in his eyes for that umpteenth painful failure.

“Sei-kun.”

He refused to uncover his face when warm lips caressed the bend of his elbow, and he stubbornly kept on not giving up even as his name, called with endearment, was whispered just beside his ear. Only when the voice turned firmer and fingers wrapped around his wrist, pulling a bit, did he finally allow his lover to look him in the eyes.

Tetsuya was staring at him as apathetically as always, but his face was still a bit flushed and sweaty which betrayed what they had been doing just a little before. As if his naked body barely covered by the blankets he was pulling to his chest like a young virgin wasn’t explicative enough. His eyes had no trace left of the hot lust from before, but showed only a warmer fondness and a good share of worry.

“Are you all right?” the phantom asked, and Akashi averted his gaze, even if keeping it high to the wall in front of him.

It was obvious that he was all right. More than fine. He was just pathetic.

“Sei-kun.” Kuroko’s voice came out a bit harsher, clearly a scolding, and his hand laid on his lover’s shoulder in a firm grip that left no room for discussion. “Nothing happened.”

“That’s the point.” Seijuro couldn’t help the poison and resignation that, opposite, soaked those words. Nothing happened, that was the problem.

For some seconds none of them spoke; they just stood still in Akashi’s room, sitting on his futon, with the morning light barely cracking the night darkness and giving them some time more before Kuroko’s parents, in the room in front of theirs, woke up. Not that they didn’t know about the relationship between the two guys, but the youngsters had posed the silent rule that being found in the same bed was not exactly polite.

 _Not that anything could happen_ , Akashi thought, crushing his feelings cruelly under more disgust for himself.

Pale blue locks moved in his peripheral vision, and for as much as he didn’t want to, his whole body relaxed automatically when Tetsuya’s head laid on his shoulder. _Almost_ unwillingly, he bent his neck a bit to rest his cheek on the crown of his lover’s head, and silently he breathed in his faint scent of vanilla.

 

_Alcohol. Blood. Semen._

He clenched his teeth, but Kuroko’s hand ran immediately to his, dangling from his knee, to intertwine their fingers. Sometimes, Akashi had the feeling his boyfriend could read his mind.

“It’s not a problem,” Tetsuya murmured, and Seijuro had already lost count of how many times he had been told that sentence. He couldn’t hold back a half resigned sigh, and Kuroko pulled a bit their holding hands, shaking him, as he lifted his head and forced him to do the same to meet their gazes. Despite their icy shade, the phantom’s eyes could burn dangerously when they wanted to. “I’m not joking nor lying, Sei-kun, I’m perfectly serious. It’s not a problem. At all.”

Akashi observed him carefully before sighing again, but this time he preceded his lover by meeting their foreheads.

“It had never been, before,” he whispered lowly, looking down to his boyfriend’s snowy chest and the hand he was holding himself up on. “And it wasn’t when I was with…”

“It wasn’t because you had no choice,” Kuroko abruptly interrupted him, almost rudely, and despite that Seijuro was glad he had been spared pronouncing that name out loud. They both knew whom he was talking about, anyway. “Don’t compare who you were back then to who you are now,” the phantom went on, slipping his hand out of their tangling of fingers to caress his lover’s cheek. The other laid against it looking for the gentle contact with the same desperate need of thirst. “You’re different, but it’s not your fault,” Tetsuya concluded. “It’s not even a fault, period.”

Akashi didn’t answer, but gently took Kuroko’s hand by laying his on top without moving it from his face.

Why was that okay? he wondered. Why could he learn to accept caresses, kisses, his bared chest, but nothing more? Why couldn’t he cross that line? He did try. He had been living with the Kuroko family for a year already, one year that had been the longest and most difficult he could remember, and it had taken him five months to manage to kiss Tetsuya in the most innocent and chaste way. In the following seven he had managed to deepen that contact, to find the courage to begin some bolder ones, to not tremble every single time his boyfriend’s fingers brushed against his hip or shoulder or neck, but that was it. Despite them trying for two months, every time they reached the hem of his trousers, the voice returned, overpowering, to scream in his head. He couldn’t bear to be seen naked by his lover, couldn’t even imagine a touch anywhere near or above the thigh. He couldn’t even touch himself because the simple gesture was enough to bring him bent over the toilet puking out his soul together with tears of exasperation and impotence, in the least sexual meaning of the word.

 _Don’t push yourself_ , Haru, Tetsuya’s father and his actual therapist, would tell him. _Nothing good ever comes from forcing yourself into this kind of thing, Seijuro. Give yourself the time you need._

And Akashi would have done it if not for that dreading feeling, like a sword hanging above his neck, that something had inevitably broken within him. Something not even all the time in the world could fix. Because of that, just one time would have been enough, and then he would have waited even for years if it was necessary, but… just one time, just to be sure that he still _could_ give himself to someone else so wholly and deeply.

“Sei.”

Akashi didn’t let him talk.

“I just want a relationship that’s… _normal._ ” The word came out like a spit because he himself knew he had nothing even remotely normal left within. “With you.”

Kuroko took the words in, but didn’t let himself be scared by so much bitterness.

“It can also be normal to love someone without having sex with them,” he simply said. “We don’t ‘have to,’ and it doesn’t make us an abnormal couple.”

Seijuro tried to retort, but the phantom preceded him, turning to kneel on the futon and lay the hands on his lover’s cheeks to force him into the embarrassment of an Eskimo kiss. Tetsuya smiled briefly, clearly victorious, of the light flush on his boyfriend’s face, and the other huffed, exasperated.

“It’s all right, Sei.” Light entered the room almost suddenly, caressing the phantom’s spine and partially Seijuro’s chest as dawn broke. “I don’t care if we don’t do anything today or tomorrow or in a month. I don’t even care if we won’t _ever_ do anything.” Kuroko’s eyes, on the other hand, were dark, deep and lost in even darker memories. “I am fine with that. I will accept whatever it means.” His eyelids fell, and for a moment he seemed to be hiding something – tears? “As long as you’re safe.”

Akashi didn’t answer that, but the way he began caressing Tetsuya’s hand back with a thumb transmitted all the same the gratitude he couldn’t voice.

“I didn’t do anything to deserve you,” he muttered all the same. He said it lowly, in a murmur, but clearly not enough not to earn himself a glare and the sudden blank pouting of his lover. Seeing the usually unreadable sixth phantom man with such a childish expression finally managed to make the Generation of Miracles’ captain smile.

Seijuro dared to try with a little peck on the lips, in spite of his tensed shoulders and guarded mind against whatever memory could attack him. Tetsuya accepted it meekly, returning the gesture but without deepening it, and in the end the two of them parted, only because _someone_ was already knocking at the door.

“Seijuro, breakfast is ready, hurry up.” Haru said, stubbornly refusing to open the door. “The tournament begins in…”

“…two hours, I know,” Akashi concluded for him, his voice a bit higher and more annoyed than how he would have preferred. Kuroko’s father had a talent of ruining his best moments just to call him for breakfast, almost as if everybody was as much of a laggard as him. “I’m coming downstairs.”

He thought he heard a low muttering, but the man suddenly finished, “I guess you can take care of waking up _Tetsuya_ , who is surely _sleeping_ in _his_ room, _right_?”

Akashi looked at his boyfriend, who simply shrugged, before sighing.

“Obviously,” he assured with as much poison as he could, and Haru’s low laughter kept on even as the man vanished down the stairs.

“You’d better get ready,” Kuroko commented, bending forward to leave a gentle kiss on his lover’s lips. “It would be rude for the reigning champion to show up late at the final match.”

“As if it would make any difference,” Seijuro huffed, but got up all the same. “I saw my challenger playing tens of times and he’s not…”

“ _… in the least close even just to the chance of beating me,_ ” Kuroko concluded for him, even rolling his eyes. “I see.”

Akashi gave him an arrogant smirk before putting on a shirt, grabbing his clothes for the day, and disappearing into the corridor. The both of them pretended that self-esteem wasn’t half denied by the insecurity that more intimate fields than shogi kept on infuse in Seijuro.

Instead of laying back again, Kuroko ran a hand absentmindedly through his hair, in a poor attempt at taming it, but his eyes stayed on the closed door.

Six years before, Akashi had been raped. After the end of their first high school year, shocked by his own defeat, he had been attacked in the Rakuzan locker room after the team had left to give him some time, assured that his driver would come to pick him up.

His attacker was none other than Haizaki Shougo.

In his craving revenge against the Miracles, Haizaki had broken and manipulated him that night, forcing him into silence by pushing on his own guilt trip and mental frailty; then he had come back months later, hurting Mibuchi during a match, and that time it had been Akashi, feeling guilty once again, who had looked for him. Something had clicked in Seijuro’s head, unstable as it was, and at the end of high school he had run away from home, unable to stand any longer against all the unattended pressures of his father. Kuroko was still cursing the day his friend asked for hospitality from Shougo himself, even if he never really understood the reasons that pushed Akashi to that gesture. Seijuro had stood with the albino, locked in a twisted and abusive relationship, for three years before Midorima found him in his hospital with four broken ribs and a concussion and on the verge of a coma, raving nonsense about deserving the violent and denigrating treatment _his boyfriend_ was putting him through. It had taken therapies, fights and the jointed presence of the whole Generation of Miracles plus Nijimura to bring Seijuro out of the destructive limbo, and since then he had spent some weeks at Shuuzou’s place before moving in with the Kuroko family, where Haru had taken up his psychotherapy and Tetsuya the task of helping him fix himself. And yet, for as better as he was doing, he had never been the same again.

Kuroko feared he would never be.

As he watched Akashi’s frame slipping in the corridor to get downstairs and to the kitchen and heard him bicker loudly with his father, he thought back to the college lessons before he majored in Pedagogy.

One of the strongest abilities of the human mind was to forget. Tetsuya just hoped it would start working for Seijuro, too.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

Akashi won the final match.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

“I’m just wondering why the fuck we still come to watch him play when it’s clear he always wins.”

Kuroko was tempted to roll his eyes at Aomine’s offended grunt – not even if he was the defeated one – but in the end he chose to keep his usual apathetic expression and to limit himself to exchange a look with Kise. The model, beside him and in front of his boyfriend, shot him an amused expression. Daiki always complained, but in the end it was quite rare for him to miss a match.

Kuroko could understand it. The cop had been the second person to see Akashi at the hospital, had been the one who had broken in Shougo’s flat to find he had almost beaten to death both Seijuro and Tetsuya before his victim himself stabbed him with a pair of scissors in a moment of fear. To Aomine, Seijuro had suddenly gone from being an invincible emperor to a frail creature that needed to be protected, and now he didn’t seem able to take that image out of his head, at least completely.

All in all, Kuroko was grateful for that.

“Daikicchi is always complaining!” Kise teased, with a smile that took away all the harshness from the scolding. “Nobody is forcing you to come, you know?”

Tetsuya was always fascinated at the shade Aomine’s tanned skin turned into when embarrassment rushed blood to his face.

“E-Eh?! What the hell are you saying, you idiot?! It’s always you who drags me here, as if I didn’t have anything better to do!”

Kise burst out laughing, eliciting an attack from his lover who jumped on his shoulders, making him lose his balance forward. Aomine passed an arm around his neck to keep him still as he rubbed the knuckles on the crown of his head. Kuroko observed the scene trying to find some differences if compared to those he used to see every day at work, in the public kindergarten, but he couldn’t.

Wrapping one more time the leash around his wrist, he turned his head to a side to exchange a look with a pair of irises that were just the same as his, and Nigou, obediently sitting down as the humans talked, stared at him from his big frame of seven-year-old husky.

“Aomine-kun and Kise-kun will never grow up,” the master commented brutally, with no intonation and ignoring the offended exclamations of the other two, and the dog barked once, sympathetically.

Tetsuya caressed his head once, but then checked his watch for a moment before looking for a moment at the door they had stopped in front of to wait for the exit of the players. Akashi was slightly late, but as the champion for the second consecutive year, it was normal he had to take pictures and shake hands and so on.

It simply wasn’t strange, but a whining and slight tug at his trousers made Kuroko lower his gaze to meet Nigou’s begging eyes, forcing a sigh out of his lips.

“Kise-kun,” he called then, choosing randomly between the two idiots still bickering. They stopped in an embarrassing pose, both pulling at each others’ hair, and stared at him as if nothing was, even managing to force him to break his mask to lift an eyebrow at them. When in the end years of experience let him know it was useless to try, Tetsuya gave up in scolding them and simply pointed at the dog. “I’m taking Nigou to the park. If Akashi-kun comes out before we’re back, tell him we’re doing the usual round.”

“I can’t believe that, Tetsu!” Aomine smirked in a way that could only mean either ‘trouble’ or that the policeman would end in Seijuro’s target soon enough. “You’re putting the dog’s needs before your boyfriend? So Akashi _does_ have someone he loses against!”

“Akashi-kun does not dirty my house if I don’t take him to the park, Aomine-kun.”

Kise started laughing again, and Daiki let out a disgusted face, but Kuroko ignored him and pulled slightly at the leash to make the big dog follow him away from so much stupidity.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

“Nigou.” Nigou turned, ears up and waiting, and looked for his master who was still some steps behind. “Don’t stray away too much.”

Kuroko smiled at his pet’s enthusiastic barking as the animal finally ran around a bit, and he stopped to stare from afar, but before he could choose if sitting or not on the inviting bench at his left, a pair of arms encircled his waist.

He smiled a bit, but while turning, he took back his mask and simply lifted a brow.

“Sei,” he pretended to complain, but the other laid his chin on his lover’s shoulder anyway and ignored him to stare at the husky smelling the sidewalk.

Kuroko stood still, letting the other be the ruler of that touch, and only after some seconds did he dare to lay a hand on the ones Akashi had intertwined on his belly. With the other, he gently caressed Seijuro’s cheek.

“Congratulations on your victory,” he said blankly, only apparently indifferent, as if that closure was normal and not a rare occasion. His lover wanted a relationship helplessly based off his twisted past, like a broke mirror ruining in every moment the images it was seeing, and Tetsuya would give it his best to provide that. “Did you have fun?”

“Quite enough,” Seijuro hugged. “Nothing much though. The level outside the prefecture is definitely higher.”

Tetsuya barely held back from rolling his eyes, but a low ringtone stopped his acid remark and ripped a little growl from Seijuro.

Turning slowly to allow his lover to foresee the gesture, the phantom kissed his cheek gently before slipping out of his hold.

“I’m going to fetch Nigou,” he whispered rapidly, and Akashi nodded as he absentmindedly took his phone from his pocket.

Kuroko heard him greeting Murasakibara as he left and smiled a bit. He whistled a bit, the lock of the leash in his hand, but weirdly enough Nigou, even if only some steps away on the sidewalk outside the park, beside the street, didn’t come back.

The guy frowned.

It was really weird for the husky to venture outside the gates since Tetsuya trained him not to, and Kuroko hurried up to reach him, worried he would jump on the road for any reason. He was so distant he couldn’t hear Seijuro’s voice anymore.

“Nigou,” he called, but his voice became higher and tougher when the animal scratched with his paws against the lateral door of a black van parked on the side of the road. “Nigou!”

The animal turned immediately with a whine, but Tetsuya saw him trying the same gesture once more and ran to grab him before he could leave some damage with his claws.

“No! Bad Nigou!” he called, slipping a hand in the collar to pull the dog back and put the leash on with the other. “You can’t do that!”

The dog whined again, and this time he pulled backward, almost sending Tetsuya to the ground.

 _It’s not normal_ , Kuroko thought, confused, observing his friend growing restless and restless, and so he bent to caress his head and try to calm him.

“Nigou, it’s all right, what’s happening?” he tried to murmur, but the animal kept on wriggling.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

It was only a coincidence Akashi turned right when Nigou pulled at Kuroko. He was well aware of the good and playful attitude of the dog, and he frowned at that bizarre attitude. 

“Murasakibara,” he interrupted as the other was still grumbling about Muro-chin cutting down his daily dose of sweets. “I need to go. Tetsuya is having trouble with the dog.”

“ _Eh, Kuro-chin and Nigou-chin?_ ”

Akashi closed his eyes for a moment, holding back from sighing at his friend’s childish suffix, but in the end he answered.

“I’ll call you back later,” he simply said, hanging up, then frowning, he marched toward his lover and the animal.

Tetsuya was bent over the husky, trying to calm him down, but the other kept on growing more restless and had started barking. For some reason, Seijuro felt himself growing worried at that weird behaviour.

“Kuroko!” he called in a loud voice, and Tetsuya straightened up and lifted his eyes to him.

It happened so fast that Seijuro barely realized.

The van door opened, and Nigou howled.

Kuroko looked down at the dog, unaware.

A big sturdy man, completely dressed in black and with a balaclava covering his face, leaned outward from the van and outstretched an arm.

Akashi’s eyes widened.

“KUROKO!” he screamed, but all he got was a flash of Tetsuya’s eyes laying on him before the man at his back grabbed his whole face with a single hand.

He ran.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

“KUROKO!” 

Kuroko lifted his head to the call, but widened his eyes when something laid on his mouth and nose, some soft and wet cloth, and his head was filled with a sickening sweetish smell, so strong it stunned him.

“I got him!”

Instinctively he released his grip on the leash, and with his hands he grabbed the wrist pressing on his chin, but that way he left his stomach uncovered, and the man brought the other arm around his waist and pulled him backward.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?! Go!”

Tetsuya stumbled against the lower part of the car and fell backward, pulled into the van. He wriggled and kicked and screamed against the cloth on half his face, and he tried to scratch, but his assaulter had long and thick sleeves and gloves on his hands, and he ignored him as the van was already being turned on.

Nigou growled, furious, but when he tried to jump forward to help his master, another man kicked his head just before slamming the door closed and letting the van leave at top speed.

Akashi hadn’t even reached the sidewalk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 is still WIP so I don't know when the next update will be, but for now, please, have fun with little babies _in pain_.

 

**__Chapter_2__ **

****

 

At first, there was only the certainty that the world was spinning all around him, and the nausea and feeling of being a separate being from his own body sustained his first hypothesis of being victim of some hangover he couldn’t remember looking for. Then the feeling of something cold and hard under his right cheek, his arm tingling painfully pressed under his body and the cutting presence of something around his wrists and ankles, locking them together and forcing the first behind his back, hit him just as hard as the memory. 

He hadn’t drunk a single drop of alcohol in a year already. Since when Akashi became part of their family, he had rigidly refused it every time. He knew the other wouldn’t have hold it against him for that, the red-head had also said it personally to him in a couple of occasions – a birthday of Aomine’s particularly exaggerated and New Years party –, but truthfully it was him who couldn’t separate anymore the smell of beer from the picture of Haizaki’s apartment and of the man slamming forcefully Seijuro’s head against a cupboard, covering it in blood.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that he didn’t drink, was tied up and couldn’t remember where he was and how he had gotten there.

He grunted trying to open his eyes, but the sound chocked with his spit into something thick and ragged, like sponge in his mouth. With a little delay, he realized there was a handkerchief or something similar and that a piece of something sticky, probably tape, was locking his lips.

A shiver ran down his spine, allowing him to regain at least part of the perception of his body, and finally he managed to lift his eyelids just that much enough to let in a little peek of images in his baffled brain.

It was too dark to understand where he was or even just what was happening. The floor under him was trembling slightly in a constant and imprecise vibration, with more violent snaps that made him jerk and worsened his nausea, and there was a continuous weird sound, like a buzzing and a blowing put together, loud and annoying, but somehow known.

After the umpteenth jerking, Kuroko realized it was the sound of an engine.

The memories of _his kidnapping_ assaulted him all at once.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

“Akashicchi.”

Akashi raised his eyes from the ground and lifted his head from the knuckles of his closed fists, elbows planted on his knees, just enough to confirm what the nickname had already hinted at.

Kise offered him one of the paper glasses he had in hands, but without any encouraging smile. Seijuro was too smart to believe him and he was too desperate to pretend, anyway, so he let the other pick his coffee and then sat beside him on the park bench.

The sound of sirens seemed to be just an echo from afar that even the low sound of wind in the grass could cover, while all the rest only tasted empty. The images of what he was seeing ran before Akashi’s eyes, but he couldn’t feel part of it, separated just as the bored spectator of an old film that’s been watched already and more than once. The air was cold and he was still wearing only the kimono from the Shougi tournament, the certificate of his victory perfectly framed lying on the ground, besides the bench, as he couldn’t pay it mind.

At his feet, whining and desperate, Nigou seemed to tremble, as if he felt guilty for what had happened. The big dog had bonded greatly with Seijuro during the last months, to the point that Haru had included him in the guy’s therapy with excellent results, and he surely perceived the agony of his master, but didn’t even dare to brush against him. Akashi bent to caress his head gently, a bit to give and a bit to take comfort from the warm soft contact.

After witnessing Kuroko’s kidnapping, he had called Aomine and the man had immediately come with Kise, but now Daiki had contacted the police station, asked for reinforcements and a forensic squad, and all the civillians had been sent away from the area to allow the detections. Seijuro and Ryouta had reached Haru and then the three of them had been interviewed. Now, they could only wait.

From afar, Seijuro observed the man hesitating on the phone’s buttons, looking for the words to break the news to his wife. Kuroko’s mother, Kyoko, was a software programmer and was actually in France for work, as it often happened. Since when the family had taken Akashi in, her husband Haru had stopped following her to stay home with the guys and following the young man’s therapy.

“It has been three hours.” Kise’s whisper that made Seijuro jerk was low, almost pleading, and his eyes wouldn’t leave the glass in his helpless fingers, “Daikicchi said whoever took Kurokocchi should give us news soon, if they're after a ransom or something.”

Akashi nodded in autopilot, his gaze falling again on the ground only when Haru brought the phone to his ear.

The victory certificate appeared in his sight again, but it was like a cruel mockery. Just a few hours before he was smiling as he received it, winking playfully at his boyfriend in the audience, and now…

Kise’s hand was freezing cold as it wrapped around his, free from the coffee cup and dangling from his knee, but also big and soft like probably only the hands of a model with two older sisters could be, and held it with far too much strength for a comforting gesture. He turned slightly, searching for his friend’s gaze, and Ryouta kept on staring at him without smiling, on his usually sunny and cheerful face only the traces of a dried-up crying and the perennial shadow of a huge worry. He returned the grip.

“Akashi.”

Kise jerked at the sudden call, but Seijuro turned with a different feeling, his red eyes lifting to search for the dark blue irises of the cop that was approaching them. He didn’t dare to ask, but anyway Aomine’s dark face and the way he was scratching his neck were signs enough to deduce there were no good news.

Aomine wasn’t sure how to say that, not when in front of him were his boyfriend and his best friend’s boyfriend both looking at him with pleading eyes. Kise was on the verge of crying again. _Shit._

He ran a hand through his messy blue hair, but in the end he let his arm fall with an exhausted gesture.

“It’s better if you two go home, now.” he let out in a sigh. Obviously, Kise jumped on his feet to object, but he cut the other off immediately. “Staying here is useless, they sure won’t come back just to get caught. And it’s still better for Akashi and Kuroko-san to be home,” he hesitated, only for a fraction of second, “in case the kidnappers send news there.”

“What about you?” Akashi himself was surprised at how tired his voice sounded. And yet he had slept hugging Tetsuya for hours, that night. “What will you do?”

“They’re letting me work on the case, for now.” Aomine nodded, staring at him dead in the eyes to transmit all the determination he was feeling. It was a meagre comfort, surely, but he was sure Akashi would have hold onto anything in that moment. “Even if I’m personally involved, in this situation I can still be useful to figure out who could have organized this thing. I’ll go home to get my uniform as the lab runs the first tests and then we’ll see how to proceed.”

The policeman’s eyes ran to the blond with a silent question, but Kise shook his head.

“I’ll go with Akashicchi.” he declared, firm, but then, as if a thought had crossed his mind, his expression turned scared once again, “I have to call Midorimacchi and Murasakibaracchi and…” he shook his head, as if talking was confusing him, and he pressed an open hand on his forehead, “…and Momoicchi and… Nijimura-senpai has an exam today so his phone is surely turned off, but maybe he’s finished already and then… If I call Takaocchi, maybe he can go look for him and…”

“Kise.”

Ryouta jerked, stopping, but when he turned Akashi was just nodding slowly. He gulped, but waited for Seijuro to get up and then the three of them, instinctively, looked up to Haru. The man seemed to be done with his call, but was staring in silence at the black screen of the phone, his pitchy-dark strands of hair covering his eyes and expression.

When one of the other agents called him from afar, Daiki gestured at him with his head, but when Akashi moved toward Haru and Kise made to follow, he couldn’t help but grab the model’s wrist, gently but firmly.

Kise barely turned to look at him. He was pale but with both cheeks and eyes red and Aomine cursed all the curses he knew silently, in his mind, for not being able to do his work and be with his lover at the same time.

“It will be okay.” he forced himself to say, with all the confidence he had, his face serious. He tightened his grip for a moment longer, ‘till when Kise gave up and nodded weakly to him, and only then he let go.

He stood and stared as Ryouta slowly reached Haru and Seijuro, the older one with an arm around the younger’s shoulders, and he didn’t turn even when he heard some steps trotting at his back.

“Agent Aomine.” The cop was a recruit that had joined the department a little before, a brat that worshipped Daiki like a god, but that now spoke hesitantly, unsure in front of the new situation. Had it been any other moment, Aomine would have laughed basking in the admiration.

“News about the van?” he asked instead, because he had enough experience to know that it was the only option. Akashi had read the plate, in the end, so there were only to possibilities: either the kidnappers were greenhorns who had forgotten how to cover it, or…

“Stolen, sir.” _Bastards._ Aomine clenched his firsts. “A patrol found it on the other side of Shinjuku Gyoen, near the Yamanote line.”

“Around the park there’s always a lot of people.”, Daiki frowned, thinking. Sure they hadn’t stopped there, a touristic national treasure wasn’t the best place to keep a hostage, so they had probably only abandoned the van to take something else. “Why exchanging vehicle there, with the risk of being seen?” The recruit jerked, caught by surprise, and stuttered something, but Aomine shut him up with a gesture of his hand. “Get the records of all the security cameras in the area, maybe we can discover what they’re driving now.”

It was ridiculous, the way the guy flew away, but Daiki wasn’t in the mood. He ran a hand though his hair once more, grunting something, but then he turned and reached for his car, heading home and then to the station with his head filled with a single thought.

_Tetsu._

_My Desperate Countdown_

The house seemed suddenly as if it had been abandoned for years, because the three passing the doorstep entered with the uncertain silence of who gets into a place for the first time, of who looks around to understand before speaking. When Haru freed Nigou from the lash and let the keys fell in a ceramic cup in the entrance, the tingling sound shocked Akashi from his impasse, bringing him to take his shoes off mechanically and laying them beside Kise’s.

“I’ll make some tea, the two of you can go to the living room.” Both the guys lift his eyes at those words, but Kuroko’s father was already vanishing in the kitchen, almost running. The both stood by the door ‘till when they managed to hear the low, muffled so that it could only be heard in absolute silence, sound of a restrained dry sob.

Kise gulped and his hand touched Akashi’s kimono sleeve instinctively, like a kid holding onto his mother’s clothes, but he didn’t move his gaze from the door. Seijuro, on the other hand, didn’t want to see.

“I’ll get changed.” he announced lowly, tired, only to escape the picture of Tetsuya’s father, usually always smiling and sunny, in tears.

Kise snapped the head toward him, but probably saw something – something Akashi was sure he didn’t want to know – written on his face for he let go of his grip.

“I’m calling the others.” Ryouta offered that chance for a bit of time more as if he knew what the other needed – taking his time, realizing, crumbling down and building his mask up again before facing whatever else was going to happen with the usual stoic firmness that had been his before Shougo and that now he absolutely needed back again not to go mad –, but Seijuro couldn’t help but wonder if at the same time it wasn’t also a way not to be left alone in the silence of the house and the reality it implied.

In any case, he was grateful.

He nodded a bit before turning his back to the kitchen and moving mechanically to the upper floor. He had a feeling that all that happened hadn’t reached the centre of his brain yet, that it hadn’t been properly processed and he was acting like during a simulation of some emergency situation, following rules he knew but without really believing to the alarm echoing everywhere. Yet the pictures in his mind whirled slower by the second, heavier and realer, and when he opened the sliding door of his room and laid his eyes on the diligently made futon, he could do nothing but enter, close himself inside and lay with his back against the wooden column dividing the moving door from the fixed one.

At a certain point his legs probably gave up, because suddenly he opened the eyes he couldn’t remember closing and found himself staring at the ceiling from sitting on the floor, his nape against the wood of the door and knees bent to his chest, arms abandoned who knew where.

Then, he realized.

Tetsuya had been kidnapped. He had been taken away under his eyes, a handful of disgusting steps from him, in barely a few seconds. Kuroko had stared at him, stared at Akashi with no idea of what was going to happen, his azure eyes big only with confusion as he laid them on his boyfriend as if asking for an answer, from him who _knew everything_. And he had failed. He hadn’t protected Tetsuya like the other had done for him, he had let the phantom being taken away, and now… What was going to happen, now? Akashi couldn’t foresee it, not in the slightest, and it terrified him.

He pressed hands on his face, but then lowered it toward his own belly and with his fingers he chocked on the strands with all the strength he had, pulling ‘till when the skin hurt, filling his mind with pain just to chase away all the other thoughts. He pulled ‘till hearing the snapping of tension when the hair ripped out, but it didn’t seem to be enough to erase the fear and he kept on feeling his own sanity escaping from him, unavoidably, as if he was trying to stop water holding it in clenched fists.

He let go of his hair to wrap his arms around his arms and chocking tremors forcefully – _it’s not you who should be scared!_ –, and his hands writhe of their own will, sticking nails into the subtle cloth to get to press painfully against the flesh underneath. It wasn’t enough, so he bit his lower lip, hard.

He jerked, all the tension in his body released at once in that sudden gesture, when the sound of a rapid sniffing was pushed under the crack of the door, followed fast by a rasping of claws against wood.

Akashi bent to a side, resting his weight on a arm and outstretching the other to open the door at least a bit, fast before the big paws of the animal on the other side decided to test the resistance of the rice paper.

Nigou slipped only his head in at first, but after turning it and making sure of Seijuro’s presence he slipped into the room completely.

“Hey.” the guy murmured, with no bite nor big emotion, tired. “What are you doing here? You know you can’t come upstairs.”

Nigou whined simply, indifferent to the rules he had just broken – while he usually followed them diligently –, and then he let himself fall lying on the floor beside his human friend’s legs. He outstretched a pawn, but when Akashi made to grab it gently, the dog pulled it away to lay it on his lap instead, hitting a couple of time as if in a rough caress. When finally Seijuro smiled at him, albeit bitterly, Nigou pulled the claw away and instead lowered to lay his big head on the other’s thigh, releasing an heavy breath and a new whine. 

_Dogs are extremely susceptible at people’s moods, Akashi-kun. Nigou always knows when you’re hurting._

Seijuro clenched his teeth when Tetsuya’s voice slipped inside his thoughts, warm like the spring day he had said those words, after finding for the first time his dog barking at the bathroom door he had locked himself behind after the umpteenth panic attack.

He outstretched a hand almost without thinking and caressed Nigou between his ears, slowly. He reached for the neck and his fingers sunk in the soft fur and before he could realize he had already slipped an arm under the dog’s throat and wrapped the other around the big figure, in a weird and uncomfortable hug he found himself extremely in need of.

Nigou stood still and silent, a dog trained by time to deal with a human brother who was too sad for his own age, and his regular heavy breaths and the strong beating of his heart were already more comforting than a thousand words. Nigou didn’t want anything and would have never betrayed the crumbling he was witnessing, he would have kept the secret of warm tears on his fur and trembling limbs around him, as always, and Akashi held him the tightest he could without hurting him, hiding his face in the animal’s neck.

“Tetsuya.” he sobbed simply, once, before sealing his lips, and Nigou whined hitting the floor with his tail once, but without moving the rest of his body of an inch.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

Midorima stomped in his director’s office and demanded in a moment all the days of paid leave he hadn’t in years.

Atsushi left the patisserie in Himuro’s hands and took the first train from Akita.

Momoi jumped down the bus heading to the university campus at the first stop she could and stopped the first taxi to get back and to Tetsuya’s house.

It had been six hours.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all will LOVE this chapter since there's such a LOVELY character showing up this time. SO. MUCH. LOVE. Yeah.

**__Chapter_3__ **

****

Kuroko wasn’t scared, or at least not yet. If he were to describe his feelings at the moment, he would have said he was just _extremely pissed_.

Fluctuating continuously in between sleep and wake didn’t help him analysing the situation in a logical way and it forbade him from comprehending perfectly all the implications of the situation. The side he was lying on probably since hours was starting to hurt and having his arms tied behind his back implied that his left limb had practically already lost all sensibility but it kept on pushing painfully against his ribs at every little movement.

With a titanic effort, he managed to finally lift his eyelids and he forced himself to keep his eyes open as he tried to re-organize his thoughts.

He was in a dark place. They weren’t in the van anymore, Kuroko was sure because it was colder and there was far more room. The light was coming in through something like a little rectangular window in front of him, high enough to be impossible for him to reach it on his knees, giving an whole new meaning to his tied ankles. Under his body was something cold and in a weird consistence, like many layers of plastic, while all around him, in the dim light surrounding him, he could vaguely recognize the shapes of many boxes, maybe in wood or cardboard, he wasn’t sure. The thing that caught his attention the most, though, was the strange figure directly in front of him.

He frowned, trying to figure out what it was – a stool?, maybe? –, but in the end it was a slight change in the light that made his eyes widen. A cold weight fell at the pit of his stomach, his whole body traversed for a moment by a shiver, when he understood.

A webcam, on a trivet, with a computer attached to it. A damn camera _pointed at him_.

It took him some seconds to calm down the beating of his heart enough to realize it was still off, the pc beside it closed and silent, but it only allowed him to gulp on his dried throat.

Now he was starting to get scared.

Placing back together all the confused pieces of his memories didn’t reassure him at all. Nigou’s weird behaviour, his name called all of a sudden, the sweet smell confusing his head, Akashi’s terrified expression…

_Sei-kun!_ Fear doubled in his chest, crushing his lungs to the point that it was hard to breath for a moment. What had happened after he had lost his senses?! What had been of Sei after that?!

_Calm down. Now._ He closed his eyes again, focused all the willpower he could master in pushing down the anxiety rising in his chest and only when finally – thankful to all the years training in keeping his feelings at bait – he managed to get back some lucidity, he forced himself to take a look around again.

Whoever was behind that whole story, must have had a reason. He couldn’t think of anything at the moment, but sure people didn’t go around kidnapping people as a joke, right? He shivered at the thoughts of being just another notch on some creep’s belt.

Instinctively he tried to pull at his improvised handcuffs, but he was forced to stop when a scorching flash made him jerk and a feeling of humidity, _wet_ , warmed his palm a bit. He must have cut himself and he cursed mentally against whatever was holding him – cable ties, he thought –. The gag on his mouth didn’t help when his breath went slightly laboured and once more he had to close his eyes and push back his emotions.

He opened them immediately, fast, when a loud metallic sound came from behind him. The clanking of old hinges, the weight of a heavy door, and his heart jumped to his throat but nothing on the outside betrayed his internal turmoil.

He didn’t turn, the arm under his trunk too much atrophied to even just think about getting up on his shoulder to look back, but he stood stoically still to wait even when he heard steps moving toward him, on what seemed to be a metallic floor by the sound of it.

Three people. Kuroko forced himself to recognize their timing, then one of them stopped beside his head and he stopped thinking.

He lifted his eyes, but the man, dressed in black, had his face covered with a white plastic mask for the whole face and the only visible thing was the brown shade of the eyes. Considering that trait useless – he didn’t even want to know how many people in Japan had brown irises –, Kuroko lifted his head and ignored his neck’s protests to look with his gaze for the other two. Man them too, going by their physical built, one had laid against the wall the captive’s foot were pointing at.

The third one moved to stand behind the trivet.

Tetsuya gulped and clenched his hands in fists to prevent them from trembling.

The man against the wall crossed his arms before lifting his eyes toward the one who was now opening the computer and working on the keyboard. With the black-gloved hand he fixed the webcam so that it framed the guy on the floor, but then he gestured with his head to the third man. This one sat on his heels and outstretched a hand.

Kuroko hissed when he was forced to lift his head by a violent grip on his hair, but he managed not to react otherwise. The man studied him for a while and Tetsuya frowned, opposed instincts in his head confusing him in between showing his rage to hide the fear or lifting again his mask.

The man looked at his companion behind the trivet and simply nodded.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

Akashi allowed himself just a handful of minutes before getting back on his feet, making Nigou whine his disapproval.

Mechanically, he disrobed himself of the kimono and folded it carefully, caressing the fabric of what had been the first birthday present he had received from the Kuroko couple. The brown cotton was soft under his fingers, somehow far more reassuring than the cold perfection of the silk that made the traditional clothes of the Akashi lineage, then Seijuro tucked it away and took instead from the wardrobe something random, that came out to be simple blue jeans and a white shirt, and he got dressed almost without seeing what he was doing. When he turned, Nigou had sat up and all it took him was a light pat on his own thigh to have the dog following him meekly outside the door and downstairs.

The first thing of the living room Akashi realized was the crowd.

Kise was sitting on the couch, all curled forward with his fingers crossed behind his nape and his elbows planted on his knees. At his right, Midorima had crossed everything that was crossable, arms and legs and hands around the thread of the yo-yo that was undoubtedly the daily lucky item, probably even his feet fingers; he was keeping his eyes closed and his back straight, but he had still chosen to sit beside Ryouta instead of the separate armchair and that counted as a great display of affection, coming from him. Climbing down the stairs, Akashi could only see the back of the second armchair, to a side of the sofa, but the pink nape popping out of it was easy to recognize.

One of the steps squeaked under his feet. The third from the bottom, Akashi usually remembered to pay attention to it. The sound was enough to alert everyone of his presence and suddenly the pink head was turned toward him, revealing big eyes of the same shade yet a bit reddened by a stubbornly held cry.

Seijuro envied Satsuki deeply, in that moment.

Well awake he looked far worse than her, he strived to gulp and climb the last steps, but before he could even open his mouth to say anything a huge bullet smashed against his chest, making him lose his balance backward. He almost stepped on Nigou, and the dog offered him an offended whine as soon as he managed to stand on his feet, but when he lowered his eyes Akashi found himself in the strong and well familiar embrace of Momoi.

“It will be all right,” she whispered to him as he was still looking for a proper place to lay his hands on and return the hug. Her chest was pressing embarrassingly against his, but he pretended not to notice. “Tetsu-kun is stubborn. It will be all right.”

Seijuro wasn’t sure to see the connection between the two sentences, but the words sounded gentle in his mind and he allowed himself to believe them for a moment. Deciding that the spine wasn’t a compromising area, he returned the hug sincerely, letting the gentle smell of peaches and cheap coffee and new books reassure him a bit more.

During his last hospitalization, Momoi had taken the burden of helping him and substituted Kise in every task that involved any kind of skin-to-skin contact, cleaning himself and everything included. Akashi had tried to oppose, partially out of shame and partially for some sort of protective instinct telling him not to let any bad rumour about her arise, but in that second month everybody had seen how difficult it was for him to strip naked in front of another man and in the end he too had had to give up and admit there was no other solution. After his third panic attack barely in the first week, Midorima had given to Satsuki the permission to take care of the patient outside visiting hours and to Seijuro a long sermon about accepting others’ help. The smell that now seemed to be permanently stuck to the girl, the scent of a student in the middle of the semester, was one of the few that had survived the strength of the medicines and disinfectants impregnating the air and to Akashi it was almost an automatic association by now: the fragrance of affection, intimacy and healing.

He held her closer, a hand rising to hold her shoulder from behind as if he was scared to fall.

“All right.” His voice didn’t tremble when he finally answered after some minutes, and Momoi simply nodded and held him for a moment more before detaching herself, still without letting him go.

On the contrary, the girl grabbed his hand to pull him with her toward the others and force him to sit on the couch at Kise’s left, beside the armchair she claimed for herself again.

“Murasakibaracchi is on the train already.” Ryouta advised, but without moving from his position, “He said he’ll call as soon as he’ll be at the station. Daikicchi said that maybe he’ll go to fetch him, it depends on when they’ll let him off the case.”

“What about the search?” Akashi asked, but not aggressively. Honestly, he was expecting Daiki to be taken off the case every moment now. It wasn’t a matter of lack of trust but simple objectivity, a virtue the cop had little of when it came to Tetsuya. Aomine was impulsive, expecially when it was about his friends, and for as much he could have grown he was still a twenty-two years old guy whose best friend had just been kidnapped. It was just logical to expect the case to be assigned to someone else.

“When I called him they had just taken his version and they were still asking him a ton of questions about Kurokocchi, who could hold a grudge against him or what they could want from his family, things like those. They are letting him check on the evidences and keeping him updated with the developments, but his chief had already told him that sooner or later they’ll pass him as a witness only.” Kise took a deep breath, stretching and running a hand on his face forcefully. Akashi wondered absentmindedly how many windows in the house his older sister Reiko would have broken yelling at him for that gesture: Ryouta’s face was probably worth more money than Aomine’s annual salary. “He’s trying to find out as much as he can before they take away from him the authorization for accessing the information.”

Momoi murmured something, something that seemed dangerously similar to ‘no need for authorization’ and that had a shiver running down Akashi’s spine for a moment, but the girl didn’t really voice whatever had darkened her face. Satsuki was a woman to be afraid of, nobody doubted that, so the other three man simply stood silent.

The silence was broken some minutes later by Haru, who reached them from the kitchen with the phone still in his hands.

“Aomine-kun had been taken off the case,” he announced lowly, his face dark despite the fact that everybody was expecting the news, “His substitute called me to ask if I can go to the station now. He wants to talk to me and then to Kyoko to see if there can be a connection with her work oversea.”

“I thought Aomine had said to wait here,–” Midorima commented, frowning, “– in case the kidnappers wanted to demand a ransom.”

Kise nodded when the doctor looked at him and when they both looked at Haru again the man sighed heavily.

“I think he detective is sure Kyoko and I will try to solve the matter of the kidnapping without referring to the police,” the man admitted shaking his head, “The fact that we asked not to have agents in our house must have irked them a bit.”

“Aomine is more than sufficient.” Akashi strived to keep his voice low, hands crossed on his lap and clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white, “Other agents here are completely useless. If they want to help, they can go out there and search.”

Momoi threw him an uncertain glance hearing the tension in his voice, but said nothing and unconsciously resumed playing with the hem of her dress – white, with a black belt –.

Midorima recognized the gesture for what it was, a revealing tic of her worry, and he shook his head without listening in the slightest to the last recommendations of Haru as the other was getting ready to leave. He returned to the discussion only when he saw the man outstretch a hand to hold Seijuro’s shoulder for a moment.

“I don’t want you to get there.” he was saying, his voice firm but at the same time worried, “I can imagine how you’re feeling, Seijuro, but the last thing you need is even this.”

_They may ask about Haizaki. I don’t want you to talk about him again. It’s still too soon._ Haru could have said those words openly, all the guys had picked up on them all the same in between the uncertain sentences he had used to cover them. Shintarou nodded to himself, agreeing, and with the corner of his eye he noticed Akashi stiffening before conceding a little nod with his head.

“If there is any news…” Kise began, a bit hesitant in taking so much confidence, but the older Kuroko nodded.

“I’ll immediately called you for any development,” he promised, straightening up.

Momoi followed him with her gaze as he got ready and not for the first time she found herself grateful, deeply so, for that man had appeared on their path. It was easy to see whom Tetsuya had taken his usual willpower from, but this…it was a whole different level. Haru was the father of a kid that had been kidnapped and in the middle of that hell he was still worrying for _Akashi_ too, that he didn’t expose his still frail sanity to a series of possible triggers that could have sent him back to the beginning of the therapy. Seijuro just as much as Tetsuya, she was sure he loved them both equally.

Haru grabbed the keys from the cup beside the entrance, opened the door and got out, leaving only silence behind.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

Kuroko was aware of how stupid it was to try to oppose resistance, but when the man that had grabbed him by the hair moved behind him and manhandled him to force him on his knees, instinctively he started wriggling. Not that he could do much with hands and feet tied and his head still locked in his kidnapper’s grip, but he thought he managed to deal a nudge with his elbow somewhere.

Clearly his lack of physical strength didn’t miss out and the other went on as if nothing happened, moving his fingers from the blue locks to the pale jaw, forcing his face toward the webcam.

“Ready,” said the one at the keyboard and Kuroko stiffened when a voice slipped inside his ear, mocking.

“Now let’s see who really cares for you, all right?”

The attempt of a second nudge was suffocated in between Tetsuya’s back and the man’s chest and Kuroko could only move his eyes forward when he heard a single ring from the equipment.

The little green led he found in front of himself looked like the most terrifying thing in the world.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

Akashi received a text from Haru telling him he had to wait for Kyoko’s arrival and one from Aomine affirming he was already coming there, and considering how fast he had been removed from the case he was leaving to Murasakibara the task to find himself a taxi once he’d be at the station, roughly in around another four hours.

Inertia was killing them. The ticking of the clock was like an accusatory reminder of how they were sitting there without doing anything – because they can’t, for if they had even just a crumble of a trail sure they wouldn’t be there at all – while Tetsuya was who knew where in who knew whose hands. Every moment seemed to thighten around their throats like a loop.

At a certain point Momoi suddenly got up and started walking back and forth behind the couch, restless. Shortly after, Midorima got up and muttered something about tea before vanishing in the kitchen. Kise, surprisingly, exploded last, jumping on his feet with no explanation, but just to then sit back again, stiffly, as if forcing himself to stay collected and not lose his calm.

Shintarou came back with the salt container instead of the sugar and when Akashi noticed it and he defended himself declaring that it wasn’t his house after all and that a mistake was more than possible, nobody dared to point out the writing on the side of the ceramic, declaring its content.

It was the worst tea Midorima had ever brewed, and that was saying something considering how precise he was. Nobody complained anyway.

Kise couldn’t do it anymore. He laid the cup on the table with maybe a bit too much force, almost slamming it, but when he opened his mouth to say something – and he first had no idea about _what_ – the sound of the entrance door made all their heads lift.

The keys hesitated a bit, clearly whoever was manoeuvring them didn’t have the confidence of the householder, but in the end the door opened right the same moment Midorima approached it, a hand outstretched backward to signal to the others to wait there.

In the entrance, the bronze skin betrayed the newcomer even more than his uniform and Shintarou relaxed just slightly when Daiki walked in.

“Aomine,” the doctor grunted, running a hand on the exhausted face, “you could have at least ring the doorbell or…”

Daiki didn’t need to lift the eyes on his friend to know the other wasn’t looking at him anymore, so he simply finished taking his shoes off and moved past Midorima, not without leaving a fast pat on his arm in reassurance, to reach to living room.

Three pairs of eyes laid on him with different kinds of expectation, but the cop had to shake his head. And, _shit_ , if it hurt to see Kise lower his head, Momoi locking her eyes suddenly to hide the raw emotions in them and Akashi keeping on staring, as if he was really hoping Aomine could change his answer.

“Uh…” _Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Damn it!_ , “Akashi, uhm… There’s someone out here. For you, I guess.”

Seijuro frowned, confused at Aomine’s hesitance, but he got up.

“Who?” he asked and his brain registered the grimace on Shintarou’s face when the man moved aside to allow the newcomers into the living room, but he didn’t make it in time to answer it not even with his eyes before his whole field of view shrunk to a single face.

He _saw_ Reo, really. And normally Mibuchi, after such a long time, in an alien pinstriped suit but with the usual expression of fond worry on the beautiful face, would have caught his whole attention and probably given the start to a series of old thoughts and guilty feelings.

But how could Seijuro focus on him, when right ahead of his ex-teammate, in one of his many grey suits for business dealing, was nobody else but Akashi Masaomi?

It had been ten hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aka: Agap is Satan and she ain't afraid to show it.
> 
> Who was missing dear ol' Masa-chan? Hands up! *not a single hand, sounds of crickets in the distance* Good, because I wasn't missing him either. I don't know why I'm adding him when I hate him so much, really -.- I guess something really isn't working in my brain anymore.
> 
> So, yeah. Time's running and something is happening... I wonder what~? Also, one thing: while this story will be centered around Kuroko, Akashi will still be extremely relevant both as the love interest and as a character who's overcoming a trauma. The reason I posted his story first is also because it is extremely recurrent in all the others (sometimes when Akashi was still with Haizaki, sometimes after he was freed). Just to make sure. 
> 
> Nooooow, that said, DID YOU SEE REO?! SAY HI TO REO-NEE, KIDS! Do not say hi to Masa-chan, he does not deserve it. But yeah, Akashi still has many issues with Reo so I wanted him back. He's not the only character from outside the Generation of Miracles who will appear in these stories, don't worry. 
> 
> Okay, this time I'm done for real. Let me know what you thought about this, you can write a comment (Very Much Appreciated) or even come and scream at me on
> 
> [Tumblr!](http://agapantoblu.tumblr.com)
> 
> I'll be very happy to answer!
> 
> See you,  
> Agap


	4. Chapter 4

 

**__Chapter_4__ **

 

It could have happened any moment, Akashi had always been painfully aware of that.

Every day he had spent in the Kuroko’s household, every second, had been a merciful concession of his father, had happened after his vigilant eye now that the man had once again his son in sight, and it was just logical to guess that sooner or later his patience would have run out. Just, Seijuro didn’t exactly know what to expect. What use could Masaomi have for him now? His perfect pawn had a deep crack right in its middle, so clear it would have been difficult to hide it from their associates even at work-related meetings. Not to mention, if the story with Haizaki were to become public, Akashi’s presence in the society could have caused not little problems. And honestly, the timing seemed a bit too peculiar for it to be just a coincidence.

The picture of a back, wide in the jacket of a business suit and terribly straight, strong, filled his mind. The red colour of a credit card, the cold of plastic and the roughness of the digits carved in it. The day Masaomi visited Akashi at the hospital for the first time in three years, after his second to last hospitalization due to the another beating from his lover, the man had given him a credit card and left without a single word. Seijuro had had a panic attack knowing that his father had seen him in those conditions, thinking about that turned back that tasted like rejection more than all the years of silence and that had hurt him more than much of the pain Haizaki had inflicted on him.

With his left hand he searched for Nigou, gripping locks of the fur on his neck. He held onto the dog like it was his only handle above a fall of a hundred miles and the animal tensed, eyes immediately on the newcomers and lifted ears, waiting to understand what was scaring the human.

Nigou wasn’t the only one to notice the reaction and Momoi and Kise were fast on their feet too. Ryouta shot a shocked glare at his boyfriend, but Aomine shook the head in his direction rapidly and the model frowned. Satsuki was already in between father and son and her clenched fists and the feet firm on the floor, head held high, were a clear declaration of how little he was willing to move of even just an inch.

Reo gulped.

Akashi didn’t know why he noticed, but the minimal gesture made him move his gaze on the ex-teammate. The green irises he met were terribly familiar, even after all that time, and the little wrinkles on the skin around the eyes were one of those little details Seijuro had learnt to decipher, one of the revealing marks that in high school used to mean someone had worried the shooting guard, sending the terrifying Uncrowned King straight into ‘Big Sister’ mode.

 _Oh._ He had missed him, he realized suddenly. He had missed Reo. In the moments he had felt lost and thought he didn’t have any right anymore to talk with Midorima or Kuroko after hurting them so much, he had felt Mibuchi’s absence overbearingly. He would have just preferred for their reunion to be in a better situation.

“Seijuro.”

Akashi didn’t jerk. Ryouta’s hand flashed to grab his wrist before he could, when the first syllable of his name had barely even died in the air with his father’s grave and serious voice, and it had grounded him on the floor. Momoi, in front of them, had instead stiffened considerably.

Masaomi had tried a step forward, but the clear reactions that accompanied his gesture made him stop, almost…hesitant? Seijuro was sure he had never seen him reacting like that to a mere shift in position. There was also something different in his face, he noticed. Under the glasses there seemed to be more wrinkles, some white hair had appeared right above his forehead and were pulled backward with the others, elegantly, but most of all the mouth was a surprise. It wasn’t pulled in the usual thin straight line, cold, but the lips were half-opened on the sentence the man had yet to say.

When the mouth pulled once more, closed, Akashi remembered to take another breath.

 _Coward._ , a voice hissed in his head. _Do you really think this is the most important thing to worry about right now?, ‘being liked by daddy’?_

He silently took a step forward, slipping gently out of Kise’s fingers and laying a hand on Satsuki’s shoulder. He shook his head a bit when the girl turned to look at him in shock, but his never left the man.

“Father,-” The word burned his tongue, throat, lungs, everything was burning, “-I wasn’t excepting this visit.”

 

_“Akashi-kun, you know my father wouldn’t mind if you dropped the honorifics, don’t you? You’re part of our family, now.”_

“You’ll forgive me, but this isn’t…-” He gulped, strived to breath again through his half-open lips, _Tetsuya_ , “-…this isn’t a good moment.”

Reo’s lips flickered for a second, desperate to hide the flash of emotion they had almost shown, and his hand held tighter the handle of the briefcase he had with him. He didn’t say anything, though, and Akashi strived not to show how odd it looked to him. Mibuchi was open, honest, and genuine just as Seijuro needed.

The very opposite of Masaomi, who instead this time turned with his trunk to look for his assistant, nodding at him. Reo gulped in bending and pulling something out of the briefcase and as he did so, the oldest Akashi turned back to his son.

“I am aware of the situation-” he began, and it was so strange to see those dark eyes, usually calculative and cold like machines, only made to analyse allies and enemies alike, now intent to study him as if looking for something. Something very sad, judging for the caution in them, “-and I am honestly sorry for it, Seijuro. I can imagine how much that man means for you.”

“No.” Masaomi stopped, a surprised expression on his face at the sudden firmness in his son’s voice. “No,” Seijuro repeated. “You can’t.”

For once, the man didn’t retort.

“I see,” he simply said instead. Reo offered him something, a silvery CD without cover or drawings, in a transparent case, and the man took it like it was his damnation. In turn, he offered it to his son. “That’s why I’m here.”

Akashi frowned, but Aomine preceded him, looking clearly upset at the rising tension.

“What’s that?” the policeman asked, clearly suspicious, getting one step closer to the other two, as if to prevent the exchange in case the object turned out to be dangerous.

“It had been delivered to our company this morning, addressed to Akashi-san personally, with even the intern number of his office.”

It was the first time Reo talked since the beginning of that meeting, or at least that was what Seijuro thought, and his voice made his skin crawl a bit. It had been so long since he last heard it, almost _five_ years, since the other’s graduation and moving to Tokyo to study, and now it was a bit different, deeper and somehow manlier. Even his looks were the ones of a responsible and competent adult as he talked to Aomine with the certainty of who knows he had the right answers. Akashi gripped Nigou’s fur a bit tighter, as the dog had moved to stay by his side the whole time.

“They used a courier,” Mibuchi continued in the meanwhile. “I called the company that took care of the delivery, but the name they had been given doesn’t result either at the registry office nor in the police archives.”

_Fake name._

“How the hell did you access the police-?!”

_Police._

“It’s them.” Aomine stopped, surprised by Akashi’s once more tense voice, but the other was staring at his father. “It’s Tetsuya’s kidnappers.”

Masaomi’s expression would have been a sufficient answer even without his nod. Seijuro could have sworn an abyss had just opened under his feet in that moment.

“He’s alive, Sei-chan.” Akashi jerked at the nickname and so did Reo, even being the one to use that, but then the black-haired man gulped and strived to appear as calm as he could while reporting what he knew. “He’s alive and seemingly unharmed. In the video he’s conscious and from his eyes it seems he hasn’t been drugged, even if it’s hard to tell for certain. They’re asking for a ransom, two of them I think, but they still have two give us the details; they say they’ll let us know something in some hours, but…-” A moment of hesitation, green irises running to Aomine before coming back to Akashi, “-absolutely no police.”

“Obviously they don’t want the police, they don’t want to get caught!” Aomine growled clenching his fists and Midorima had to grab him by an arm to prevent him from reaching Reo and possibly attack him physically.

“I’m just referring what the kidnappers said,” Mibuchi defended himself, firm, but the disaster had already been done and all the voices rose on one another.

“We cannot trust them!” Daiki retorted above the chorus of objections and opinions. “A video means nothing, they could have recorded it any time!”

“I…!”

“Even paying,-” Silence fell when Masaomi’s firm voice filled the room, the man not moving of an inch and with his eyes still on his son, who was silent too as he stared at CD still offered in his direction, “-there’s no guarantee that the kidnappers will keep their side of the deal and return the hostage. Calling the police implies just the same risk. It’s not for us to make this choice, but for the family of this man,-” he frowned, “-and I think I understood that you, Seijuro, are already a part of it. At the very moment, this is a choice that falls on your shoulders.”

 _Responsibilities._ What a irony that in their first meeting after so long those were once more the gift his father brought to him, as always. This time, though, Akashi chose of his own volition to take the CD from the man, careful not let their hands touch.

“We’ll watch the video,” he declared, his voice steadier than what he believed possible. “After, we’ll decide what to do.”

Once more, his decision was absolute.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

_The quality isn’t the best, but maybe it’s just because of the scarce lightning. The little light there comes from behind the camera, anyway, and falls perfectly on the kneeling figure on the floor, arms tied behind his back where stands also another person._

_Tetsuya stares in camera with lucid and frantic eyes, then sometimes he moves his gaze around, looking for something, maybe only the face of the man who was keeping his jaw still with a hand and pointing a gun to his temple with the other._

_“This isn’t a joke, Akashi.” The voice has been altered, deep and metallic, and the man has a balaclava on his face, dresses all black camouflaging himself with the background, but the brown eyes are well visible through the only opening in his outfit. “This video is just to make you understand that, so now you better listen carefully. There are just a few rules and if you’ll follow them literally, nobody will get hurt.”_

_Kuroko widens his eyes still looking at the camera, alerted by the name of his lover, and tugs slightly at his restrains, but his kidnapper pulls him back against his chest._

_“On the bottom of he case there’s a link to a live-stream platform and the password to access a prepared account. When you’ll be logged in, you’ll receive new instructions and maybe I’ll allow you to talk with him.” Tetsuya grunts when the hand on his jaw tightens the grip and shakes his head brusquely, “No police, no trying anything funny. The live-streams will happen only when we decide, the next one will be in five hours, and by then you better have given some good explanation for what happened to the agents that showed up this afternoon at the cultural association.”_

_A terrifying click accompanies the bullet as it enters the barrel._

_“If I even just get a feeling that you talked with the cops, even if just a stupid traffic warden comes to your door with the most insignificant of the fines,-” The metal presses a bit more into his head and for a moment Tetsuya closes his eyes and stiffens, but then he goes back to stare at the camera, stubborn, “-you’ll have to collect his brain with a teaspoon.”_

_The scene doesn’t last much after those words, but for a minuscule moment in the silence stand only Kuroko’s eyes. Azure, cold and terribly determined._

_Then everything turns off._

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

“Son of a bitch,” Aomine growled, marching back and forth behind the couch of the living room as the others still stared at the black TV screen. “He’s a fucking bastard, dammit.”

Nobody dared to answer him, the silence heavy in the room as Midorima, Kise and Momoi exchanged worried looks. Masaomi was impassive, sitting with crossed legs on the armchairs that had previously hosted Satsuki – now perched on the armrest of the couch, beside Seijuro –, while Reo seemed shaken despite having seen the video once already. Akashi stared at the blackness as if he could still see the print in negative of Tetsuya’s gaze, combative and hard, but also of the barrel of the gun against his head.

“How long ago did you receive that?” Shintarou asked, rigid.

“Three hours ago,” Masaomi answered with no hesitation. “We firstly tried to find the courier, in case he was involved. While searching the police archive, Reo found the report on Kuroko-kun’s kidnapping and I tried to contact his parents, but none answered. We came here immediately after.”

“Does that mean…?” Momoi hesitated, turning to her comrades with her eyes widened but finding only faces as pale as hers.

“Two hours until the next live-stream,” Kise murmured, his voice hesitant as his gaze ran to a pair of red eyes that though didn’t seem willing to answer him.

Seijuro held his hands together to hide the tremor, then he turned.

Aomine took a second to notice his gaze but when he did he paralyzed, eyes going wide in reading the message clearly written on the other’s face.

“Akashi, that’s not a good idea,” he tried to say immediately, paling so much it was evident even under his tanned skin. “This is a serious matter, we cannot risk…”

“I am aware.” Seijuro respected Aomine’s natural instinct from investigation, the way he seemed born to wear the uniform he was had still on at the moment, and thus he kept his voice calm, even if firm anyway. He respected also his friend’s opinion, but he wouldn’t follow it. “That’s why, I ask you not to inform your colleagues for now.”

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

Kuroko struggled like crazy, slamming now his ankles now his head against the floor violently. From his throat rose aggressive growls and the coldness had left his face to give room to the determination to escape, despite the fact that his jailers were still in front of him and staring with commiseration, throwing in mocking comments from time to time.

“If you crack your skull, they’ll pay for nothing, you know?” smirked the man that had been behind the computer to take care of the recording, the one Tetsuya had called Cameraman just to have a name to match the curses.

His answer was slamming the plant of his feet against the floor, causing a tremendous noise against the metal under the plastic veils he had been laid on top of.

“Dickhead,” the man who had yet to do anything but watching his friends said. He was Arm, because the only remarkable trait he had were his thick arms. He was the one who had dragged Tetsuya into the van.

Kuroko would have ignored the insult and kept on struggling if the ringing of a mobile hadn’t caught his attention. He moved his eyes on the three and felt a shiver as he saw Chief, the one who had pointed the gun at him, pulling a phone out of his pocket and smiling in reading the caller’s ID.

There was a flash of gold for a moment, nothing more than a muffled sound against the plastic that nobody noticed and then Tetsuya’s eyes were back on the criminal. Whatever he had seen, he wouldn’t allow them to notice it too.

“We got him,” Chief said as a greeting, eyes fixed on Tetsuya who answered them with a glare. “He’s resisting, but won’t be a problem.”

Kuroko stood motionless, perfectly in silence, trying to hear the answer from the other side of the phone, but he only managed to catch a distant buzzing.

“Yeah, we already contacted Akashi, he should be ready for the first request in a couple of hours. You’re sure he’ll pay, aren’t you?

“Calm down! I have the right to ask, given the situation! And you already messed up with his height, it wouldn’t surprise me if-…

“No, I tell you it was wrong, we had to go buy some stupid cable ties in a fucking shop because the height wasn’t right.

“Who the fuck cares if it’s written on his medical records, they must have guessed it roughly! And get rid of those bloody folders; if they find them on you, it will take them nothing to make the connection! Now that we know the chloroform doesn’t risk any reaction with whatever shit he’s got in his body we’re okay, it’s too dangerous to keep them. Just check there’s nothing that can send him into abstinence crisis suddenly, we really don’t need that crap too.” He grinned staring at Tetsuya. “He needs to be in full strength for the show.”

Kuroko wished his mouth wasn’t gagged so he could spit on his shoes.

“Yeah, I’ll call you after we’re done with the live, you keep an eye on Akashi: if he calls the police, it will be troublesome. Later.”

Chief hanged up, shaking his head as Cameraman yawned and stretched his arms above his head before moving behind the computer and starting working with it. Arm kept on staring at Tetsuya for a bit, frowning.

Kuroko grunted against he scotch on his lips when Chief moved in front of him and sat on his heels to look at his prisoner in the face.

“You, my dear boy,-” he smirked calmly, “-will earn us an whole lot of money.”

Tetsuya tried to his knee with his head and almost managed, but the man got back to his feet just a moment before. A couple of gestures to his friend and all the three of them moved to get out of the door at Kuroko’s back, ignoring him like he wasn’t even there.

The phantom struggled some more, ‘till when the door was closed and the steps had vanished and then a bit longer, just to make sure. He stopped, listening, but when he heard nothing for some consecutive minutes, finally he rolled on his stomach.

Crawling with his hands tied behind his back and on stupid plastic veils – garbage bags?, something like that – was a titanic and humiliating task, but Tetsuya kept on, eyes fixed on the golden object that had just fallen from Chief’s pocket when the man had pulled out the phone.

When he recognized it, he widened his eyes.

 

_My Desperate Countdown_

 

“Akashi, I agree with Aomine, it’s too dangerous. We should tell the police or at least Kuroko-san, before taking this decision.”

Shintarou was the reasonable one, as always, and Seijuro was grateful, but shook his head at those words.

Haru, Tetsuya, Shintarou, they didn’t know, but Akashi did. His family had many enemies, the possibility of a kidnapping had been extensively contemplated and he himself had been subjected to a long series of theoretical lessons on how to act to avoid or eventually deal with the situation.

As Ryouta worked on his computer, beside him, he observed Momoi sending once more the video backward obsessively, maybe for the tenth time, to observe it, to understand. Something was playing the borders of the girl’s mind, picked on her as a reminder that something was there, something was missing, and she couldn’t understand what. Once more, Kuroko closed his eyes with a gun to his temple.

“Haru cannot be contacted within the police station, Shintarou.”

Backward once more, what was the problem?

“Yes, but…!”

A bit forward, now the feeling had left. Something had changed in the previous photograms, so she sent it back once more.

“Aomine, we will call the police after we listened to their requests, depending on the situation,” Akashi established tiredly, moving his eyes on the cop, arms crossed and behind the couch, “It’s the best course of action to keep until when Haru could call us. Did you hear him? ‘ _If a traffic warden knock at the door_ ’.”

Midorima frowned, confused by his words. “You think they might be watching us?”

Akashi ran a hand through his red hair, trying to breath deeply as he got up to reach the doctor, beside the cop.

“Maybe, or maybe they’re only watching the house or the phone line. It’s plausible since they seem expert of technology and knew where to find us at the moment of the kidnapping.” He crossed his arms too when he was close enough to let the man brush, _accidentally_ , a hand against his, in a comforting gesture that was poorly hidden. “Or maybe they too managed to enter the police server. I’m sorry to inform you, Aomine, that it’s a system that some good hacker find easy to break into.”

“Let me guess,” Daiki sighed heavily. “I don’t want to know how _you_ know, right?”

Seijuro offered him a tired smile. He opened the mouth to answer.

“THREE!”

They all jerked, Ryouta letting out a half scream and Aomine a curse. Nigou jumped immediately to his feet from under the coffee table where he had been hiding and in a moment he was beside Akashi, sniffing his hands to make sure he was okay.

Momoi didn’t apologize, but kept on pointing her finger to the stilling photogram on the TV.

“Three!” she repeated, this time almost challenging, passing the table to lay the finger directly on the screen, “They’re at least three!”

Reo blinked, confused. “How can you…?”

“Here,” Momoi didn’t even let him finish, showing off what looked like nothing more than a little black triangle on the left side of the screen. “Do you see it?”

“Satsuki, damn!” Aomine growled scratching his head, maybe a bit embarrassed for his reaction earlier, “See, what?!”

Momoi sent him a freezing glare, but Akashi instead frowned, squinting his eyes to better see.

“That is…?”

“The tip of a shoe,” Satsuki confirmed nodding in his direction before rapidly fetching once again the TV remote. As soon as the video started again, only two seconds passed before the triangle moved to disappear from the shot. “They’re at least three and the person that shoe belongs to has stood still the whole time, just to move almost at the end of the video.” She frowned. “I don’t think it was wanted, or else they would have simply recorded it all again from the beginning. They must have moved to change position. The other foot cannot be seen so this one must have been a bit more forward. I think he was leaning against a wall, it would explain the inclination of the leg. Also, based off the proportions of the foot of the other man, I think it’s another a male, similar height, but I’m not sure.”

Reo blinked again. Masaomi looked taken aback. The other four just accepted every information.

Momoi hadn’t become the best data analyst of the whole juvenile basketball community just because she could discern a ball from a player and she didn’t get a full scholarship for the law faculty of Tokyo University out of luck. A plain nothing was enough for her to deduce a whole world. What her eyes could see was slightly under what Seijuro’s could usually see, but while his previsions came from actual facts and his interlocutors’ psychology, hers came out of scraps. A diamonds castle built straight from coal.

“Three people are a lot to share a ransom,” Aomine grunted. “I saw kidnappers killing each others already when there were just two of them.”

“They know what they’re doing, have technological support and are organized in a fairly big group that seems sure that nobody will try to cheat the others,” Momoi added, nodding as her eyes looked for Akashi, as if the two of them were on the court and she was trying to pass the ball to him.

Obviously, he didn’t miss it.

“If Satsuki is right,-” he added in fact, rigid, “-the third man’s posture is relaxed. He’s not worried by the fact that they have just kidnapped a person, nor he’s nervous. Same thing for the man with the gun. He has a firm hand, even the finger on the trigger is not trembling in the slightest.” The conclusion was far too simple, but made him stiffen anyway. “They have already done it before,” he stated, striving not to gulp nor to show any sign of how much the news was terrifying him.

They were dealing with _professionists._

And it had been eleven hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two reasons made me excited to post this chapter: Kuroko's video -because, you know, it's time to get down to business- and Momoi's skill. Obviously this was just a peek, but I want you all to keep it in mind, she'll have a great role in this story (and she's a queen okay?!).
> 
> That said, look at my precious little Akashi trying to play it cool despite all. Either he'll break down eventually or...who knows...something might happen? We'll see.
> 
> Masaomi is useless right now and Mura-chan is on the train, don't worry, he'll come soon!
> 
> See you,
> 
>  
> 
> [Agap](http://agapantoblu.tumblr.com)


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